K. J. Charles just never needs to go as hard as she does, and I love her for it.
The Sins of the Cities trilogy is three queer romances set in the 1870s in London, which are very openly her take on the Victorian melodramatic "potboiler" genre of the time (scandalous aristocrats, lost heirs, fraudulent seances, murders in the fog, kidnapping, the works). The books shamelessly fulfill the tropes of both the romance genre (complete with HEAs for all six of the leads!) and the Victorian potboilers. Two populist genres fully accommodated...
... but with such compelling characters and likeable prose and so much nuance and such intensely precise and excellent historical research, and such a sharp and compassionate and where relevant really angry eye on class, race, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, and gender.
Also fucking hell the London fog of December 1873 sounds terrifying. They had to close the theatres because even though it was inside, the people on the front row of the stalls couldn't see the stage. People got lost within a few yards of their own houses, and the fog followed you in and trailed around your legs whenever you opened the door or a window. And it was to a large extent made of coal and wood smoke, so it was horribly hard to breathe through, even if you had no pre-existing lung problems. Ngyarrgghh! Charles gets this across to the extent that when you witness a character manage to navigate his way across town because his memory and spacial awareness are just that good, it rightly seems like like a superpower to both the other characters and the reader. :-) <3
But honestly, K.J. Charles just always goes harder than she needs to. On historical accuracy and caring so so much about her characters and sometimes on being Really Fricking Weird. Love her. :D
14 notes
·
View notes
I'd just like to thank literally anyone who has said that they've read dom Eddie more than once because idk how you would even DO that or want to do that and I’m actually fully in love with you
57 notes
·
View notes
one of my favourite underappreciated dynamics is that where polly and tommy & michael have this constant suspicious, wary tenseness between them, arthur is polly's precious little boy, her little brother-nephew, absolutely nothing wrong with that one !
7 notes
·
View notes
Niki and Eret’s friendship during the early DSMP arcs was so sweet. Here are some highlights I keep thinking about:
When Eret tries to help Pogtopia, Niki is the first one to vouch for Eret saying she trusts them
When Fundy says Niki didn’t have any armor and Niki asked if Eret had any iron armor, Eret gave Niki netherite
When Eret confessed they were worried people wouldn’t ever trust them again because, you know, Niki reassures them by saying, “Eret, I trust you. You’ve been my friend ever since the start. You might’ve betrayed L’Manberg in the first war, but I believe that people can change. I’ve seen people change for the worse, but I believe they can also change for the better.” :’)
When George, Schlatt, Punz, and Quackity were trying to arrest Niki and George aimed a bow at her, Eret IMMEDIATELY stepped between Niki and George and drew his sword.
181 notes
·
View notes
So these are my main fic writing goals (none of which I'm working on again until, like... mid-December, at the earliest--I don't have the time rn and I'm way too fried to write anyway).
CAVEAT: Needless to say, this is all ridiculously ambitious and will keep me busy probably until the end of time, or at least until I get bored of something and move on (which I will, definitely). I don't anticipate keeping up this year's writing pace into next year, and even that wouldn't be enough to complete all of this particularly quickly (especially because some of these are more involved--not all, but some). Like, I really don't write fast. At all. It's an illusion. At the very least, I don't do so consistently--I do it in bursts.
pdwm 'verse:
memorized your smile lines (Jonathan at NYU--pretty ambitious, but I kind of have to write it)
holding incandescent light (Joyce working through the stuff I introduced in Iconoclast and building a future for herself, also very ambitious)
the handful of more interstitial pdwm stories that I've mentioned (all probably in 5k range, I'm guessing)
Would be awesome to finish pdwm, basically, and mark it complete.
Also:
finish the 4 prompts/requests I received for my milestone event (2 porn, 1 shippy, 1 character study) (bolded because that's up there, priority-wise)
finally write some Jargyle
finish the Carol/Nancy one
Finish Safelight (don't know if I'll post it, but either way, you'll hear about it when it's finished lol)
properly plot and finish Riptide (because I need a fun comic book sci-fi crossover in my life)
Finish And Where Do You Rest?
Finish strange is your language
Finish Rainy Day (probably won't post)
Finish In Bocca al Lupo (THG; might post, might not)
Finish that one profoundly upsetting Johanna & Finnick story that I almost certainly won't post
Finish/post something from literally any fandom other than the main ones I've been posting about lately (I do write them--I just don't seem to have finished them in a while) (I'm thinking it'll be Scrubs)
finish any of the X-Men WIPs I have (though preferably the one with 616!Cable getting whammied into the X-MCU and meeting a slightly less fucked up but deeply grieving Scott)
finish literally anything from Circadian, but preferably Ozone
write Farscape fic (because I haven't written any in years, but my feelings for Crichton and Chiana are very, very big--no, you don't understand, I love them)
finally write the fucked up Hard Core Logo porn that I've been thinking about for more than a decade
These represent a fraction of my WIP folder, but they're the ones that I think would be particularly satisfying to do.
I really cannot describe to you how many WIPs I have, for each fandom. I get, like... a lot of ideas. Sometimes I plan, sometimes I just get an impulse and start writing. There's no way I'll ever finish more than a fraction of them. Which is fine! That doesn't bother me. I'm exercising a lot of creative muscles here, so... it's pretty fun.
But, like, to be clear, I don't pressure myself about fic. If I do it, I do it; if I don't, I don't. It's not something I'm ever willing to stress or feel bad about. (Not that there's anyone out there eagerly waiting to read my work, lol. But still.)
5 notes
·
View notes